Our Obsession With Certificates

When I watched the documentary on Jelani Aliyu,  the Nigerian designer who designed a globally renowned electric car, the Chevrolet Volt and was recently appointed by President Buhari as the director-general of the Nigerian Automotive Design and Development Council (NADDC), I noted how proud his teachers were to have taught the genius. They kept praising his ingenuity and creative mind. Also, Jelani himself confirmed that Chevrolet didn't ask him to present his certificates before they employed him, as they were more concerned with what he was able to design and deliver to them. 

A friend who just finished the coursework for her MSc told me about a lecturer, whom on her first in class to lecture the students, announced to them that nobody would get an 'A' in the course, no matter how hard they studied or wrote in the exam. According to her, she, as the lecturer was the only one allowed to make an 'A' in the course! True to her words, nobody got an 'A' in that course. Does it even make any sense??!! As a teacher, shouldn't it be a thing of pride when your students excel and do better? Here it is often seen as a competition between the teacher and the students; some teachers actually get envious when you score very high in a course they taught you. I also heard of a very smart girl in a Medical School here, who did so well in her exams that the professors felt it was impossible for a student to perform so excellently. They kept this girl in a room for a while, then proceeded to grill her for hours to ascertain her intelligence. 

I just wrote some examinations, and again I was confronted with how obsessed we are with certificates, not with acquiring knowledge. The reason why most graduates cannot defend their certificates is that few people really hope to acquire knowledge in the University; employers are after the certificate, so they do all sorts to get it and present to them. We need to be more concerned with acquiring knowledge, not cheating or sorting to pass the exams. You attend a workshop, they demand for certificate at the end; go for a seminar or training, they ask for certificates. Yet when you ask them to explain what they've learnt or hope to see it in practice, you'd be grossly disappointed.

It is not uncommon to see people who did not pass through the University, but who if given the opportunity will do better than those that attended the university, especially in the technical fields. Nigeria is where you'd meet an electrical engineer that cannot change a socket, a mechanical engineer that has never handled any form of machinery, or a civil engineer who doesn't know anything about building or construction. Yet we expect them to do these things upon graduation?

The bitter truth is that as long as we keep prioritising the possession of certificates over the acquisition of real knowledge, we keep churning out quarter-baked graduates who cannot write a letter or defend the certificates they bought.